“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” -John Green

“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

                Have you ever just lain down next to a friend, a family member, or your significant other and listened to them read to you? Or just whisper sweet nothings into your ear, calming you, lulling you to sleep?  The scene this quote is from takes place between Augustus and Hazel.  They both are suffering from different types of cancers and neither is sure if they’re going to survive.

                This quote makes me think of how my grandfather tells me stories of his childhood and adolescents.  When listening to him tell me these stories, it’s like I’m a little girl again, dreaming about flying a plane, riding in the cool classic cars of the 50’s and having to be home by the dark for dinner.  Listening to these stories makes me fall in love with a different time, a time where you asked a girl’s father to take his daughter on a date, where you actually called and had a conversation; where it was cool to go to a drive-in movie theatre.

                When I think of this quote, it makes me feel a sense of nostalgia for those stories from my grandfather. It also makes me long for those nights around the camp fire with my best friend and her family. Telling and listening to our personal experiences with camping trips, hunting, fishing and riding ATV’s.  It makes me long for those trips to the beach with my family, feeling he sun on my skin, the warmth soothing me into a calm serenity.